I'm new to Balloon Mollies and was wondering...

Hey guys!

I began breeding platies, mollies, guppies, and swordtails around the age of 11 with my mother's help. I'm now newly married and my husband and I started a fish tank and decided that mollies were the fish for us!

Anyway, hours after when we got home from the pet store with our new family members lol, we noticed there were a few baby mollies in the tank! I only bought one black male balloon molly, one female sunset balloon molly, and a dalmation molly. None of my females looked pregnant to me. I'm pretty sure that my sunset balloon molly was the one who gave birth to the fry.

It's really hard to tell if balloon mollies are pregnant! I think that she's pregnant again! Her stomach is much rounder. Here are some pics. Is she preggo? I'd love some advice and input!!

 

Rule of thumb with Livebearers: If its female, its pregnant. LOL

She's cute :3 Welcome to FishLore, and back into the fish keeping world!

 

In the third picture, she looks very "square". That's a good sign that they will have fry pretty soon.

 

lol! Ain't that the truth!

Do you think she may give birth within the next week? Does she look pregnant to you?

 

I would say sometime in the next week. It's really hard to tell because she always looks round.

 

Thanks guys! I'll be watching her closely!

 

I have raised regular Mollies for years. In my experiences they can have any where from 2 to 60 fry at one time but the balloons normally don’t have but a few at anyone time. I have also found that they are not as prolific as most other livebearers are and only drop fry about every 60 to 70 days unlike guppies giving birth every 28 days.

Now on to your question, I would say yes to her being pregnant but with balloons it is really hard to guess how long, but my best guess would be a week to two weeks at the most away from dropping fry. Ether that or she has a digestive problem so to determine which I would feed her a few shelled frozen peas. If she has a constipation problem the peas will cure it normally and if she is pregnant it will be some good nutrition for her.

 

I have read that it can take up to a whole week for a balloon molly to drop all of her fry. Tomorrow will make one week that she had the two fry that I have now in a nursery. She had three in total but by the time I found the 3rd he was floating at the top. Unless some had been eaten, that is.. She looks to me like she was getting a little rounder. My husband seems to think her gravid spot is quite noticeable. I have thought that too, but at the time I thought she may have been finished giving birth. I will definitely give her a fresh frozen pea though. It sounds very nutritious..

 

It is possible that you stressed her a bit when you got her so she dropped a few fry which were able to survive and she is still holding the rest. They can hold them for quite sometime before giving birth so she could very well be still holding some.

 

Another factor could possibly be that when I got her I had 2 pretty aggressive swordtails at the time that seemed to bother my mollies. I had to take them back to the pet store because it wasn't worth stressing my mollies over. I decided to isolate her a breeder net this evening because I'm leaving for the weekend. I fed her and she seems to be perfectly fine.

 

Well guys when I woke up this morning I had around 20 new little balloon mollies! Strangely the other two babies sort of look the same but sort of different. They seem to be a lot smaller?? And the newborns seem bigger?

 

Well guys when I woke up this morning I had around 20 new little balloon mollies! Strangely the other two babies sort of look the same but sort of different. They seem to be a lot smaller?? And the newborns seem bigger?

There are runts of the liter like anything just keep finding them and make sure if u see one disformed get rid of it.also congrats on the babies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

 

Congrats on the babies!

 

It is possible that you stressed her a bit when you got her so she dropped a few fry which were able to survive and she is still holding the rest. They can hold them for quite sometime before giving birth so she could very well be still holding some.

Looks like I might have hit in on the nose once. Sounds like the first two were just a bit premature due to stress and she was still holding the others. Dang, don't tell my wife I was right because I am sure she will disagree.LOL

 

Fortunately my instincts told me to put her in the breeder trap last night. So all the babies are safe and sound! Thanks for all the advice!

 

And I believe you did hit it right on the nose!

 

Hey guys! Thanks for everyone's help lately. I was wondering about my fry. They all seem to be either transparent white or yellow. Do they develop spots as they grow? Or change colors? Anything of the sort? I have a 2.5 gallon nursery for them and it's very interesting just watching them grow and play.

 

They will start developing their colors in a few weeks. They stay light colored normally while young for protection but as they get older they will develop more of their colors. I have some that are born half clear and half black and in a month or so you can tell that they are half black and half gold. My Dalmatians look almost clear when they are born but my blacks are totally black when born.

 

Same with my guppy fry. They were super small, and very pale. Now, they're getting more colorful, though the females seem to be more about growing than getting pretty. My platy fry are bright orange, but they bury themselves so they can't be found as easily.

 

Hey guys it's me again! I have pretty successful with the babies so far and I haven't lost any! However, I noticed that Aurora (mommy fish) has a single white spot on her tail fin. IDK if it's ich or it's always been there and I just haven't noticed it! I've treated with Ich solution for a few days and noticed nothing was happening. Now I treated with a dissolving tablet. The tablet and solution were dark blue and seemed to stain my roman columns in my tank, but that's the least of my worries. None of the other fish are infected. I'm hoping Aurora will be okay! ADVICE WELCOME.

 

What is the temperature of your tank? Did you remove the charcoal filter media from the filter? These are the first two questions that came to mind when I read post #20. The reason I ask about the temperature of the tank is, you can treat ich by simply slowly raising the waters temperature to around 86 degrees and keep it there a few weeks and the ich will die off all on its own because it can’t live in water temperatures that high. I keep my Molly tanks around 82 degrees to start with so raising them to 86 is no big deal to the fish.

The only thing I am concerned about is there is only one white spot. Normally ich will look like the fish is covered with salt due to a lot of little white specks but a fungus can look like a small white cotton ball. Normally a fungus only grows in a few places on the fish. If it looks like this I would treat with Forma-Green for a week. Now if it looks like a hazy white patch it could be another type of fungus more commonly known as Columnaris Disease by bacteria and should be treated with TMP-Sulfa or Sulfa 4 or Triple Sulfa Powder. One reminder about using medication is you need to really remove any charcoal filter media for the medication to be effective because the charcoal will neutralize the medications.

 

The temp. Of the tank stays around 80 degrees. And when I treated her with the Ich treatment I removed the carbon filter portion. I seen parasite/ fungI dissolving tablets that you use for a week. I'm wondering if that will help?

 

I have never used them so I wouldn't have a clue. Maybe someone who has will chime in with their results using medication tablets.

 

I have horrible news guys ... My baby fish all passed away except for one. They were doing perfectly fine in a 2.5 gal tank with heater and air pump until the air pump didn't work. I woke up yesterday morning to a dysfunctional air pump and dead babies. I'm devestaed. I feel like such a bad pet owner. I did however salvage one of the baby fish. It's now in my main tank in a breeding net. My husband and I are both upset. However, Aurora's spot seems to be slowly shrinking thanks to the medicated tablets I'm using.

 

Don't be hard yourself. Stuff happens that we can't do anything about. :console: